Archive for the ‘Self Improvement’ Category

Over the last ten years or so, I have had several businesses to include an online embroidery business as well as a web design business, and being a very busy person I have learned some valuable lessons.  One of the most important things that I have learned is that the most precious commodity that a person has is time, because let’s face it; they are not making any more of it.  So, time management is a very serious thing to consider, and if you want to take a look at someone that had a very productive life, take a look at Benjamin Franklin.

In addition to being one of the founding fathers of America, Franklin was a true Renaissance man.  Franklin had many achievements to add to all of his political endeavors, to include the involvement of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution; Franklin was a musician, poet, and avid chess player that wrote several essays and treatises on the subject.  He was also an accomplished scientist that helped to uncover the mystery of the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream, while making and writing about scientific discoveries in the fields of electricity, meteorology, principles of light and cooling.  His inventions were considerable as well creating the Franklin stove, lightening rods, the musical instrument called the glass armonica, ( That’s right, it is called armonica not harmonica!) and bifocals just to name a few.

One of the things that made Franklin so successful and diverse was his management of time.  Franklin was a master planner, mapping out his days in advance so that he could complete his goals and spend time on his ideas while keeping track of the progress he made with them.  Franklin usually kept a small private book on his person wherein he not only planned out his days, but also kept track of his accomplishments, appointments and important dates.  Many of the time management planners that we have today are a direct result of Franklin’s records that he kept.

How can you apply this to your real estate business and personal life?  Obviously, if you do not have a planner yourself, you need to buy one.  If you don’t want to buy one, you can always use technology like Google’s Calendar to get one and print it up off of the Internet.  However, having said that, you can get excellent cheap pocket planners that are great because you can carry them in you back pocket.  They have schedules so that you can keep track of your car’s maintenance, your travel expenses or just about anything else you can think of.  I personally like the smaller pocket versions, because they are cheap and convenient to carry around.  Also, if you lose it you won’t feel so bad because you will not have paid so much for it.

Once you get into the habit of planning your day out, you will find that you not only will accomplish more but you will feel less stressed out.  You can then begin to knock off all of those important tasks that you need to take care of in order to move your real estate business forward.

As many of you already know, one of my favorite quotes is by the famous marketer named Dan Kennedy.  Mr. Kennedy’s quote was, “If you are making money from only one source or direction, then you should not be sleeping well at night. “

You Need to be Diverse!

What he is trying to tell you, is that you need to be diverse in your business dealings and ventures.  I will give you a good story about what this principle means from a personal perspective.  Years ago, I had an online embroidery business, in which I would create musical instrument apparel like tuba hats, oboe shirts and a host of other creative apparel.  I marketed my business strictly online, and for a long time I experienced some online success in my business.  I used basically two methods of online marketing; I ran items on eBay and I also developed a commercial web site that I could sell my hats and shirts directly from.

Google Changes its Rules

I learned how to do search engine optimization by reading books and networking with successful Internet marketing entrepreneurs.  One day, something interesting happened.  Google decided that in order to be the most sophisticated search engine in the world, it would change the way it ranked websites.  In other words, rather than choosing websites that had tons of links pointing to a site as one of the determining factors , Google decided that the links pointing to a website needed to be relevant.  What this meant was that you had to have links pointing to your website that were related to your content.  To give you an example of this, if you had a website about Burmese pythons, a website about selling mattresses  that linked to your site would not be counted too much as far as relevance is concerned.  However, if you had a snake charmer’s website, or a snake supply website linking directly to your site, then the links helped your site as far as relevance was concerned.

Millions of Dollars a Month…Gone!!

To cut a long story short, in one single night people that were making literally millions of dollars on the Internet, were making nothing.   Websites that could easily be found could not be found anywhere, to include mine.  However, because I was a small businessman that had just entered the arena of Internet marketing, my loss was a mere disappointment.  I surfed around the Internet to find out what had happened, and I met a man on a forum who was really whining.   He was making millions of dollars online with a computer parts business and he was now making nothing.  Why?  He was in trouble because he only used one avenue of marketing to sell his wares.  Here was a man that had a huge data base of customers and he never sent them a marketing email or any direct mail pieces at all.

This is why you should have as many avenues of marketing and obtaining, maintaining, and cultivating clients as you can.  Not only do you need multiple channels of marketing, but you also need other ventures to make money with as well.  In my next blog post, I am going to tell you more about these other channels and avenues so that you can make money no matter what happens.

Video: Dan Kennedy Talks About the Worst Number in Marketing:

Today, I’d like to pause for a minute to talk about a philosophical point of view that I think is important. I try not to talk in abstract philosophical terms too often because I like to speak in concrete terms and about action plans that you can implement.

Livin’ it up!

Recently, I was watching a program on MTV that chronicled the lives of three young people. I guess you could say that it chronicled their lives so far, because they were in their early twenties and they looked very young. Anyway, the premise of this reality show was that these were healthy, productive people that lost their jobs. It showed them going through all sorts of life changes because they could no longer support themselves, and it also showed how hard they worked at finding another job.   Lin\ The amazing thing about these young people was that in all three cases, these folks had lost six – figure jobs! Not only had they lost incredible incomes, but the jobs themselves were what I would call “dream jobs”. They had positions such as public relations, purchasing agents for elite companies as well as upper level management. They all three apparently made the same mistakes with money that younger people usually do, and that was, living life high off the hog. They lived in the nicest places, drove fancy cars and partied a lot. Now, they were reduced to scrimping and cutting corners every way they could think of just to survive.

What Can We Learn From This?

There are several important lessons to be gleaned from watching this program. First of all, you should always try to have more than one method of making money, even if it is just a little bit every month. One of my favorite marketers and sales persons, Dan Kennedy, who is also known as the “millionaire maker” says, “ If you are making money from only one source or direction, then you should not be sleeping well at night.” If you have only one income, then perhaps you should consider another venue, perhaps an entrepreneurial one. Another important lesson that can be learned from this episode was the fact that just because you are making a wad of money, perhaps you should still get more education.

Keep Learning and Growing

As a matter of fact, it probably would not hurt you to diversify your education too. You can either build on a skill, or you can learn something else. A person that has a skill or trade and can demonstrate proficiency in it will be far more employable than a person that knows just how to answer a phone. Even though this blog is written primarily for realtors and real estate professionals, the advice should be the same. You can either sharpen your skills in sales by going to seminars and reading books, or you can learn how to make information products, write books, become a public speaker, etc. There really is no end to the things you can learn and become proficient at. I personally have been practicing what I preach. I am a fairly decent web designer and writer. I have been writing consistently on and off of the Internet for the last five years at a profit. I have a bachelor’s degree in music education and master’s in educational technology. Just recently, I have started learning everything I can about online streaming video and creating video tutorials.

If I can say one thing about the real estate sales profession that is important to your livelihood, it would be that you are in a business that requires diligence and skill. You are also in a profession that has highly transferable skills. The sales industry has almost always been around and is as diverse as any profession can be. So, if you have been making your primary income from sales, you can pat yourself on the back because it is a skill that not everyone has the diligence and perseverance to do. I would encourage you to always upgrade your skills and education as you continue to push toward your career and goals in real estate sales.

I want to take a break from my usual video post this week and talk to you about two things that I think are absolutely

Our Savior

necessary for your success in marketing real estate on the Internet. As I prepared my next tutorial on how to create a presence on the World Wide Web I had a premonition that I may possibly be leading people astray. There are two fundamental concepts that I want to share with you before going into any more detail on how you should use the Internet in your marketing efforts.

Whenever I tell clients this first concept or principle, a deer in the headlights expression usually crosses their faces and I can see some hesitation in their mannerisms. The reason they react in this manner is because of what they believed or thought about using the Internet as a marketing vehicle was flawed. Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Clause, or Tooth Fairy or honesty in politicians; however, there is an alternate universe called reality. If I were to list marketing vehicles ranking from the most effective to the least effective it would look like this:
 
1. Face to Face or Direct Contact- Meeting people face to face and letting them get to know you is quite possibly the most powerful marketing method known to man. This is why there are so many books and seminars on the subject of sales and why companies will compensate their best sales people with all sorts of incentives.
 
2. Networking / Referral Building – Knowing people and contacts that know other people and contacts ranks near the top of the marketing food chain. This is why it is always imperative that you have a system in place to get referrals from your friends, contacts and clients.
 
3. Public speaking – This is another method of getting potential prospects to see you while networking with other professionals in your business area.
 
4. Writing – Nothing will call attention to you quicker than becoming an authority in your field and one sure way of doing that is to either become a syndicated writer or author of a book. Thanks to the Internet, you can accomplish this somewhat on your own by writing excellent e-books and articles on one of hundreds of article websites on the Internet.
 
5. Promotional Events – Seminars, business fairs and similar events is a good way of meeting people and getting your business card into their hands.
 
6. Advertising – Getting into the Yellow Pages, writing ads and direct mail pieces are still effective means of getting noticed in the market place.
 
Way down in the gutter is the least effective method of marketing. This method is difficult if you don’t know what you are doing, hard to track effectiveness on and is loaded with competition and distractions.
 
The least effective method of marketing is…(Drum roll please…) The Internet!!!!
The Internet is the least effective for a number of reasons, several I have mentioned already. There is a ton of competition out there on the Web, and there is more of it every single day. There are loads of distractions too, so you are going to have to fight and work like the dickens to get your market share.
 
So my first big tip is – Be prepared to work!
 
My second big tip is that you can use the Internet effectively if you have a system that works in tandem with the marketing methods I have listed above. You should have an offline strategy as well as an online strategy in which both of the strategies work together complimenting and helping each other.
 
Example: You man a booth for your real estate agency at a lawn and garden show. You talk to people and hand out business cards. You also collect names and addresses (email addresses too) from people that want to win a free clock radio. You take the email addresses and place them into an online email and newsletter service like Aweber. Now you can market back to these people over and over again via email.
 
Example: You write an e-book that will be of value to anyone looking for real estate. Perhaps you can write an e-book on how to invest and still make money in real estate in a down market. Next, you place that e-book on a CD along with a list and links of properties that you are representing on the Internet as well as your contact information. (You can also use this disc as a reason to call and follow up with people you meet to ask if they had a chance to look at it.
 
These are just a few methods that you can use to effectively use technology and the Internet to attract and stay in contact with new clients and customers. In the real estate business as well as any other that requires marketing you will need every funnel you can get. The Internet not only can provide you with prospects, but also method of funneling contacts from other marketing efforts as well.

Every now and then, I’ll be looking through magazine articles and different posts that I find on the Internet and I am amazed at how many experts I find on there with “secrets”.   As a matter of fact, I get email every day from Internet gurus that claim to have found one little secret that unlocked the door to $324,000 in just two hours!  If you are one of the many people that actually purchased a course like this, don’t feel bad, because just about everyone I know that has dabbled in Internet marketing  has bought in to one of these “secrets”.  Some of the people on the Internet that I have high regard for, like Ken McCarthy and his System Seminar, are legitimate and their products and seminars are loaded with techniques that can actually help you.  However, you have to find the technique or idea that works for you and use it consistently.

Many times, you can find much of this information either for free, in a cheap book or you can buy a specific course that will tell you exactly what you need to know.  I know of one particular guru that actually tells people for free how he puts his courses together.  He goes onto Amazon and purchases a pile of books on a marketing subject that he has done some research on.  Actually, he looks for the top selling marketing books and sees how well they are selling first, and then he purchases the books.  He quickly goes through the books and highlights all of the pages in them that he thinks are important and then sends the books to a person that will rewrite that material and make a course out of it.  (Actually a series of e-books and some Camtasia videos he made on his computer.) After that, he markets the crap out of the “course” with Clickbank affiliates, Adwords campaigns, and a bunch of other common Internet marketing techniques.  This individual is actually is in the packaging and redistribution of information business, as most gurus are.  Consider this; you make a “course” or series of e-books that can be shipped or downloaded very cheaply, then you charge $345 U.S. dollars for it. If you sell only two of them then you will already have made a profit, not to mention that if you hype the heck out of your product, you will possibly sell a pant-load of them.

The other day, I saw a secret for real estate agents that caught my eye, involving the online ad service, Craigslist.  This secret was so powerful, that real estate agents could get thousands of leads overnight!  After doing some investigating, I found a guru wannabe that spilled his guts on this particular technique.  Basically, the technique involved a slight lack of integrity, in my opinion.  He said that he would compile lists of foreclosures from online services (many of which you could easily get for just a few bucks month) and he would run ads online saying that he had many foreclosed properties for sale.  He would use an opt-in box to collect your email address with and sometimes get your phone number as well.  Once he had that, he not only would send you a few of the foreclosure properties in the area, but also regular listings that he was trying to push.  The real value of this technique was to try to get an interested buyer‘s email address so that he could market back to that person over and over again.

Here is a video with a “real estate Internet marketing secret technique”:

The bottom line is; yes, there are marketing techniques you can get from the gurus, but most of the time you can get them for free if you do the research.  In my opinion, you should always be honest, and forthright no matter what product or service you are representing.

When I was in the U.S. Military every year, I received a pay raise. It usually wasn’t much, but it was always nice to get one. Year after year, I had a pay raise and a cost of living allowance that went up like clockwork. Man, those were the days! Once I got out of the military though, I started to work for other businesses and companies. Sometimes there were pay raises and sometimes there were not. I remember that I, as well as other employees would hang around after work for a couple of minutes, to get our usual I hate my job and I don’t get paid enough session out in the parking lot. After all, we had done the same dumb job for years and we were entitled to more money, weren’t we? I mean let’s think about it, I was doing the same exact thing for a company for 4 whole years and they weren’t even nice enough to give me a cost of living raise. Who the heck do they think they are, anyway?

One Thing You Can Do For Yourself…

Well, the fact of the matter was that I didn’t deserve a raise and neither did my cohorts. You see, we failed to do the one thing that we should have been doing since the day we started to work for an employer. The one thing that we should have done, was we should have added value to ourselves. While we were working, we should have been learning new skills. (Preferably skills that will actually make you money) We should have been taking classes, we should have been reading and starting a small business on the side to increase our incomes. We should have been doing tons of things other than wasting our time complaining about how someone didn’t give us a life.

Honestly, I Practice What I Preach

So one of the things I have learned from people that are affluent, is the fact that they have specialized skills and knowledge that no one else has. Now, please don’t send me any complaints telling me how you don’t have any time to learn or do anything else, because I work from 6:00 AM until midnight or even 1:00 Ahem most days. Hey, I still manage to squeeze in time to watch Jeopardy with my wife. But after Jeopardy is over, I’m back to work on classes, Websites and other projects that will add value to my life.

I am literally a self taught: music composer, Web designer, writer, artist, historian. I run an embroidery business and two other Websites plus I write for their blogs as well. I am currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Education Technology with Boise State University Online. (Believe me when I tell you that the projects those teachers throw at me are not easy.) On Thursdays, I teach a private lesson to my trombone student. Oh, did I mention that I teach 5 History classes, one Bible class and Physical Education class every day too?

One Thing You Can Do Immediately is.…

Here’s a clue to those of you that can’t find the time to better themselves……Turn off the TV !!!! I find that I get a much better education when the tube is off. If you are doing work that doesn’t require concentration, then you can listen to talk radio. There are tons of excellent shows on the Internet as well, if you have streaming audio or broadband. There are finance shows that talk about Radio like the Dave Ramsey show, There are car shows, yes, even sports talk (Duh).

Or you can go on eBay or Amazon and buy Sales courses that are on audio. It is amazing how much valuable information you can gather with your time.

Remember, if you take any one message from this Blog, it should be this:

Use your time wisely, because they aren’t manufacturing any more of it and acquire and learn new skills and knowledge so that you can add value to yourself !!!